I'M DONE SHOPPING AT CIRCUIT CITY
It'll be a cold day in heck before I step foot in Circuit City again.
After their lesson in loyalty this week, I don't think I want to do business with them anymore. I'm afraid some of their filth will rub off on me.
Do you know what happened?
On Wednesday, the bosses at Circuit City stores all across the country called workers in and read to them from a script provided by corporate. In this script, the employees were told that they were being fired.
For being good.
Not because they goofed up. Not because they weren't capable. Not because they had done anything wrong.
But because they were paid too much. Circuit City said: You're not worth what we pay you.
So you're fired.
And we're hiring immediately to fill your position, but at a lower wage. You are welcome to reapply for your old job at a lower hourly wage -- in 10 weeks.
Now give us your nametag, punch out and f-you very much.
That's corporate America in 2007. The moral underpinning essential for freedom has so frayed and failed that crap like this happens and Wall Street nods approvingly. It's almost as if to get an MBA you have to sell your soul, with the deepest depths of hell reserved for those who cash the biggest management bonus checks.
The claim from Circuit City was that it was overpaying its employees, that they would be better off with cheaper employees.
So those at the top of the pay scale were canned.
But don't worry about the executives. By "top of the pay scale" we mean those making between $10 and $15 an hour.
Which is less than a waitress makes on a slow-tip day.
But how did these evil employees end up making so much money at Circuit City?
By being loyal to their employer.
For those of you unfamiliar with the word "loyal," it refers to an extinct human tendency in which people treated others the way they wanted to be treated. It involved respecting and looking out for those who respect and look out for you. It involved friendship and fondness. People in America used to be loyal. Some still are.
And Circuit City fired them.
See, the way you get past the $10-an-hour mark at Circuit City is by not being a flake. By working your shifts and not quitting on them. You stay on your job, and you get good semi-annual reviews, and you get merit raises. You be exactly the kind of employee that customers and good companies want. If you do that, and stick around a few years, you start making more money.
One man I talked to was making $13 an hour. He had started at $8 an hour five years before. Most of his raises were twenty-five or fifty cents an hour at a time, though one raise -- when he assumed bigger responsibilities -- bumped him up $2 an hour. He was a great employee and each one of his six-month reviews was excellent.
And they called him in and read the script to him.
In a few days somebody with no experience will be making $7.50 an hour to replace him.
But don't worry, Circuit City says employee morale and customer satisfaction will not be hurt by this.
Which is one of the more preposterous lies of all time.
This company has just told all its junior employees that if they advance or stick around that the company will fire them. The remaining employees have just been shown that they mean nothing to the company. If you don't quit after a year, your merit raise puts you in jeopardy. If you take on more responsibility and get paid for it, you are in jeopardy. You don't grow with a company like that, because if you do, they'll fire you. Circuit City just put its remaining employees on notice that their employer considers them prostitutes, thrown over at a moment's notice when a cheaper whore can be found.
And customer service? Come on, this removes the last vestiges of professionalism from retail. This is a giant middle finger right in the face of the shopping public. At Circuit City, competence is not the criterion for employment, cheapness is. So people who actually know something about the company and its products, who might have build up some technical and sales skills over the years, are out the door. Instead, sales clerks will be the bottom of the economic barrel, with no more clue what they're selling than the man in the moon.
It is a disaster.
And it is a call to action.
To whit: Don't shop at Circuit City.
To heck with them. If this is the way they treat their employees, it is filthy to do business with them. It is wrong to reward their immoral greed and avarice with your patronage. If their employees can't trust them, neither can their customers.
So let them save their $1 an hour. And let them do without your business.
Freedom -- economic, social or political -- requires restraint, or it becomes chaos. But that restraint must not come from government. It must come from conscience, from a reliable sense of right and wrong. People and businesses must have a moral code of personal conduct that makes them act honorably and responsibly.
Because when that's gone, liberty becomes license and freedom becomes selfish savagery.
Like this action of Circuit City.
Make a stand for what's right: Don't shop there.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2007
